No. 836: Minerva Street, E2

Some of the parishes in the City, and in Southwark, “farm out” their paupers at so much per head per week. They are taken into the keeping of persons in the neighbourhood, who speculate in them just as some individuals do in providing black cattle and horses with “keep” for whatever period may be agreed on. The parties who engage to provide these paupers with food, clothing, and lodging, at the small sum—generally about four shillings per head a-week—agreed on, make, as a matter of course, the most they can of them, by causing those of them who can work, to do whatever they are most adapted for. Some of them make the workhouse clothes for the men and the boys; others make and mend shoes; others, again, prepare hair for upholstery articles;[…].